LA PAZ – Uruguayan soccer manager Alfredo Arias will be the new head coach of Bolivian-league side Bolivar, the club’s president announced on Saturday.

In a tweet, Marcelo Claure welcomed Arias and said he would be the team’s “coach and leader” and arrive in Bolivia on Monday.

Claure said Arias was a manager with a strong track record and said the club was impressed that he had criticized what he termed a “lack of professionalism” at his previous team, Ecuadorian-league side Emelec.

Before coaching Emelec from mid-2016 until last month, Arias had been the manager of Uruguayan club Montevideo Wanderers from 2011-2015 and Chilean side Santiago Wanderers in early 2016.

Arias took over at Emelec in May 2016 but resigned last month after the club’s poor result in the Ecuadorian league and the Copa Libertadores, South America’s premier club soccer competition.

Bolivar has had mixed results recently, having won the Bolivian league’s 2017 Apertura and Clausura tournaments (thereby qualifying for the group phase of the Copa Libertadores) but finishing fourth in the Bolivian league’s 2018 Apertura tournament.

That result in the Apertura meant that Bolivar, by far the most successful team in the history of Bolivia’s domestic league with 28 titles, has thus far failed to qualify for the 2019 Copa Libertadores or the 2019 Copa Sudamericana, South America’s secondary club competition.

It also led to the club’s decision to fire its head coach, Brazil’s Vinicius Eutropio.